


Det är vad pojken gör

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Violence, Heartache, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25079071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: Five truths and a lie.
Relationships: Renly Baratheon/Robb Stark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Det är vad pojken gör

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afewreelthoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/gifts).



**FAMILY, Part I**

The first time, they're laid next to one another on the bed, school shirts crumpled and ties loose around their necks. Robb's auburn hair is a tousled halo around his head on Renly's grey bedsheets, and he blurts it out.  
'I don't remember my mum and dad.'  
Robb turns his head to look at him, blue eyes wide and long-lashed and making Renly's stomach flip pleasantly, and he frowns at him.  
'You what?'  
'My mum and dad. I don't remember them, they died when I was two.'  
Robb pushes himself up on his elbows, cocking his head like a spaniel. Renly would want to run his fingers through Robb's hair, smooth those wild curls, but he can't bring himself to look at him. It's shame, now, that makes his stomach churn; something he can put a name to, instead of that nebulous feeling of weightlessness and excited apprehension that promised surprises to come after the frozen moment in time.  
'I thought you said they were paramedics? Always on shift?'  
'I needed something to say, to explain why my brothers were the only ones who were ever home, that wouldn't make people look at me exactly like you're looking at me now.'  
Robb tries to rearrange his expression into something more neutral and says, 'How do you mean?'  
'Like I'm something broken. Like I'm to be pitied. I don't remember them, Robb, because I barely knew I had them in the first place.'  
'But-' Robb pauses, his brow knitted. He doesn't get it, Renly knows. Of course he doesn't get it; he has four siblings and two loving parents. He's the apple of Catelyn's eye and Ned is full of nothing but pride when Robb does well at school. And Robb does do well; captain of the football team, close enough to the top of the class to keep his teachers happy but low enough to be popular, not a teacher's pet. Robert doesn't give a shit about Renly's grades and Stannis is constantly up his arse about doing better. Renly wonders what it's like to have a family like the Starks.  
'It's not a big deal, Robb.'  
Robb looks at him, his gaze soft, and just nods silently, flopping back down to the bed and resting his head on Renly's chest.

* * *

**HEALTH**

The second time is in the boys' toilets at school, when Renly is hiding from the Year Eleven boys who keep threatening to flush his head down the toilet if he doesn't stop watching them play football at lunch with that poof look on his face, and Robb finds him with his fingers down his throat trying to choke up the anxiety and corned beef hash that are making him feel sick.  
Robb, still lying on the probably piss-soaked floor of the toilets where he's wriggled halfway under the stall door to check on him, reaches around to haul himself all the way through, crowding Renly in the tiny stall, and stumbles up to unlock the door. The click of the lock seems to work on all of the emotions Renly's been keeping bottled up too, and he bursts into noisy tears.  
'I can't stop making myself sick,' he sobs, and Robb leans him against his own chest, rubbing Renly's back and wiping the vomit away from the corners of his mouth with the cuff of his blazer. Renly makes a noise of protest - it's gross, after all - and Robb just shushes him.  
'It's okay,' he murmurs, and Renly heaves a shaky sigh. It's not okay, and they both know it; but somehow, in this moment, with Robb's arms around him and his heartbeat steady and even against Renly's cheek through his shirt, it is.

* * *

**LOVE, Part I**

The third time is when they're in Year Ten and Renly is hopelessly, embarrassingly in love with a Year Nine who plays on Robb's football team. The boy is gorgeous, with a cloud of wild brown curls he keeps pulled back in twin cornrows for practice, cheekbones Renly could shave with and lips he wants nothing more than to kiss raw. Robb calls him out on the fact that Renly - notoriously without a single shred of interest in any form of sport, ever - is suddenly attending every KLBA match, front-and-centre, and he can't keep it a secret any more.  
'It's Loras.'  
'What about him?' Robb asks, towelling his hair dry and hanging his cleats over the end of the changing room bench by their laces. Renly watches a droplet of water drip off a wet curl and run down the line of Robb's spine, disappearing into the towel wrapped around his waist, and looks away.  
'I think I love him,' he says, squirming a little inside at how thirteen-year-old-girl-ish it sounds when said out loud, and Robb laughs.  
'You and the rest of the school,' he says, and Renly groans.  
'Don't remind me. He could have his pick and, let's be honest, that pick is unlikely to be me.'  
'I don't know,' Robb says lightly, slanting a look sideways at him, 'I've heard him speculating about what _you_ would look like sweaty and shirtless after a football game, too.'  
'He thinks I would voluntarily play football?' Renly asks, an amused lilt to the corners of his lips.  
'I don't think that's what he was planning to do to get you in that state, no,' Robb says, and laughs again at the sudden and violent pink hue of Renly's cheeks.

* * *

**FAMILY, Part II**

The fourth time is at home, when Renly is nursing a bruised cheek and equally battered pride. Loras had dumped him a few hours before, after a spate of arguments that had initially gone from mildly arousing (he's cute when he's angry) to irritating, and which culminated in an entire lunchtime of the cold shoulder before Renly had had enough. He cut class in the afternoon and went home, only to find Robert in the front room, drunk and belligerent as ever and demanding to know what the fuck these pictures were about.   
'These pictures' were the ones Renly had gone home with the intent to destroy; Polaroids from a friend's party in happier times where he and Loras were wrapped around each other like vines, hanging off one another's shoulders and sentences, eyes and mouths laughing with bottles of WKD in their hands. Mouths kiss-bruised and hickeys visible on their necks. Teenage and in love.  
Robert, naturally, didn't approve of having a poof for a younger brother, and had made his displeasure known. And so, several hours after having had his heart stepped on by a boy he possibly - probably - loved and his face slapped about by a man he definitely didn't, Renly is lying on the living room carpet wondering if it would make any difference at all if he ran away when Robb walks in.  
He doesn't need to ask what's happened. The clear imprint of a signet ring in Renly's swollen cheek is answer enough to that question. Renly's so grateful, for his silence and his tact and his entire presence, he could cry. Instead, all Robb asks as he helps Renly up and gently presses a bag of frozen peas against the bruise is, 'Is it the first time?', and Renly, voice as tired and old as the world, says, 'No.'

* * *

**LOVE, Part II**

The fifth time, it's the last day before Christmas break in Year Twelve. Robb is this time the one to have been summarily dumped by his short-term girlfriend, and is moping by the bike sheds whilst Renly smokes and finishes _Dubliners_ for his English coursework. Robb pulls at his tie, loosening the knot, and groans. 'It's just…'  
'It's just what?' Renly asks, not really paying attention to anything except doodling a stick-person portrait of James Joyce being brutally murdered in the margins of the page (an expression of just how much he hates this book), and Robb sighs.  
'It's just, I feel like I should be more sad about it. But she said it's like I already had a girlfriend already.'  
'Well, did you? Because you've been keeping her bloody quiet if you have. We're together pretty much twenty-four seven, and I've not seen you with anyone else.'  
Robb gives him a funny look, and Renly's stomach flips. It's a comfortable sort of feeling now, an old friend; he's convinced himself it doesn't mean anything, because really, he's been feeling this around Robb for years and if nothing's happened yet then it never will, and yet.  
'That's the thing,' Robb says quietly. 'She asked if we were together.'  
Renly's heart stops. A thousand denials spring to the tip of his tongue, falling over themselves to be spat out first, and the cigarette falls from numb fingers to fizzle out in the sleety slush around their feet.  
'Well, we're not, so…'  
'Aren't we?' Robb asks, and Renly could swear there's a weird sort of hurt there. He glances up at Robb, confused.  
'Do you want to be?'  
'Do _you_?'  
He could say it. Any one of those thousand frantic denials could slip out of his mouth. But instead, what happens is, as with the mock courtrooms of Renly's Law classes, the truth will out, and he nods. And as Robb's mouth fits over his, soft and sure, he lets his eyes fall closed and loops his arms around Robb's neck, the flipping of his stomach turning to swarms of butterflies.

* * *

**LOVE, Part III**

The last time, they're back to the start. Four years older and wiser, about to leave the insular safety of King's Landing Boys' Academy for the great unknowns of university and adult life, and they're laid side by side on the bed. This time their shirts are covered in classmates' scrawled messages of good luck, ties unknotted and left to dangle either side of unbuttoned collars, and Renly's throat is thick. Robb turns his head to look at him, the long curls Renly had so adored now cut short around his ears.  
'What?' he asks, and Renly shakes his head. He doesn't know how to say it, doesn't know how to give voice to the feelings pushing their way up out of his chest into his mouth where they tie his tongue in knots. He swallows down the _I love you_ s and the _Don't leave me_ s, and they sit like rocks in the pit of his stomach instead. Robb sighs quietly and turns away again, to stare at the crack in the ceiling plaster above him and address his words to it, rather than to Renly.  
'I think we should break up,' Robb says, and Renly - who should have seen it coming, really, because everyone leaves, don't they? Really? Everyone he cares about, leaves him - feels the bottom drop out of his stomach and his heart sink to his toes.  
'Right,' he says in a small voice, and it's a matter of small pride that he manages to say it without a wince. Robb continues speaking to the crack in the ceiling.  
'I just don't think it's a good idea to go to uni in a long-distance relationship,' he tells Renly, and all Renly can do is nod numbly. He doesn't hear the explanations that come next, nor the platitudes of _We can stay friends_ and _I still care about you_ and _You're my best friend, Ren, talk to me_ s.  
The last words Renly tells Robb are lies, the whispered 'It's okay.' And he lies to himself, when he lays there long after Robb has gone, unmoving, and tells himself that it doesn't hurt.


End file.
